On Tolerance

People generally need to be tolerant of the good and reasonable. What is usually espoused in the name of tolerance is the acquiescence to evil and irrationality. Propagating capitulation is not an act of sagacity but of subversion.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Being on Social Media

Being on social media is to be inevitably attached to a social cause. You may say it is not a cause but it is narcissism that overwhelms the media, but I see the very narcissism as the most consequential cause. Narcissism, I think, considerably mitigates hegemonistic sways which dictate social life. More fundamentally, being in the public domain itself is serving a social cause.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being Selective Beings

Normally reading, seeing, and feeling are acts of unconscious selection whereas writing, showing, and touching are acts of conscious selection. One selects what to read, what to read from the reading, and what to mean by the read.  

Niraj Kumar Jha

What is Truth?

One can say, and so very appropriately, that there are only truths, no Truth. The other way of looking the same is that there is a Truth - The Truth - which encompasses all: things, beings, phenomena, nothings, nonexistent, and noumena. It is perfectly absolute in this way. 

This Truth, nonetheless, is fathomless to mean anything. Yet, at another level, there is the Truth of humankind, an imagined pivot of everything which holds and sustains what concerns them and that it does most appropriately. It is this abstraction, which gives meaning to all human phenomena. 

This Truth is our existential touchstone. In that sense, it is absolute though its cognition is relative. It informs all human beings and leads all to decide on truthfulness in their respective milieu. 

At the very practical level, truth is what one gets to know first-hand and chooses to stand with what one knows. 

At a higher level, truthfulness is about being conscious of the possibility of deception in perception and projections as well. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

A World of Humanity

 While global politics reverberates with polemics and manoeuvres of a century-vintage, global life leaps farther into the future. Times push individuals to be their own and, at the same time, expose the pitfalls of collective impositions and the grave dangers they pose to humanity. To the saner souls, the gigantic human formations do not inspire awe but engender disgust. They wish for a rule-based global order and barrierless borders. Nonetheless, they do not wish nations to go away but see them countervail any possibility of global tyranny. Internationalism, not globalism, they wish for.

Humanism is in the offing to define humanity in its true spirit.  Everything and being would be reduced or enlarged to their exact size. Larger-than-life images and life-dwarfing ideas overwhelming human consciousness so far would not be able to delude human eyes. We can see a world of humanity in the foreseeable future. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Post-untruth

    Earlier, truths came from royal mints. Now, anyone can forge these. It is the age of the Internet. Cryptos compete with fiats.
    We all know its downsides. These have been appropriated to castigate the phenomenon in totality as post-truth. But the totality contains something larger.
    Truths need to compete to prevail. Or still better, there is no truth which can claim supremacy.
    More on the brighter side, it is very difficult for the untruths to sustain. People have now the whole ocean of knowledge accessible if they are not debarred from full access to the internet.
    It is the post-untruth age.
    Truths never had better times than they have today. With so many filters, people somehow find them no matter where they are kept hidden.

Niraj Kumar Jha

दुःख और सुख

बुद्ध ने अंगुलीमाल को समझाया था
जीवन दु:खों से भरा है ।
इसे बढ़ाना बहादुरी नहीं है,

इसे कम करना है।

सहानुभूति और स्वानुभूति से युक्त होना
मानव होना है।
घृणा जीत लेना ही प्रज्ञ होना है।
किसी की पीड़ा को कम कर देना वीरता है,
दु:ख को हर लेना पराक्रम है।

सच तो यही है:
दु:ख प्रदत्त है, सुख सत्प्रयत्न  है।

अर्थ सुविधाएँ जुटाने का माध्यम है
सुख तो मानवता का संबंध ही है।

जीवन तो दु:ख ही है,
सुखविस्तार जिजीविषा हो;
कोई दु:ख व्यर्थ नहीं जाए,
प्रत्येक हमारे सुख के उद्यम की प्रेरणा बने;
ऐसी हम कामना करें,
प्रार्थना करें।

नीरज कुमार झा

Money

Money has been the greatest invention of humanity and the last of folks. With this, folks became humankind.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Immediate is Ultimate

 Everything, being, and happening are indispensable constituents of the ultimate, as grand or as trivial as anything. So are we human beings. Though just being a part of or being ultimate like anything, the nature of being is so that we cannot know the ultimate. In other words, it is unknowable. Our legitimate or practical concern as per the property of our being appears to be only immediate, the concerns of time and space.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Speculating on Wisdom

  Intelligence may be, but the wisdom I think is not for ego gratification or personal glorification.  Wisdom may even not be about contentment or happiness. I guess, wisdom rests in understanding things and sharing them for the general good. And, it is about the feelings of pain and suffering or relief and happiness, not being placid, and more than anything it is about being one with others. Wisdom does not seek special treatment for the bearer or impose itself over others. It only seeks considerations of ideas for the betterment and does not propagate a better idea. At ideating, it is not about fixities but about possibilities. Though it is almost useless to talk about what you do not know, I think I can speculate on how wisdom works or on what a wise person may be like. I hope somebody can be of help in making me understand what wisdom really is.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Engaging the Existential

Causations are interlinkages of phenomena; there is no reason for the phenomenal. Things are there without reason, including beings; finding rationale or designating rationality is how human minds engage with existence. It exists only there. Life for human beings is also as it is, but inheres choices for them of what to make it within the confines of their agential reach.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

समाज: अहम् तुष्टि और पुष्टि का व्यूह

जैसा दृष्टिगोचर है कि सामान्यतः एक मनुष्य अहंमन्यताकामी होता  है। व्यक्ति का मन स्वयं की विशिष्टता का भाव गढ़ता है जो उसके लिए उसके  अस्तित्व को  सार्थकता देता है। उसकी विशिष्टता उसकी वास्तविकता से भिन्न हो सकती है, और सामान्यतः होती है। वह तरह-तरह के यत्न कर अपने स्वनिर्मित बिम्ब की  दूसरों से पुष्टि चाहता है। यह भावना कुछेक में इतनी  प्रबल होती है कि उनके प्रयास विचित्र और यहाँ तक कि स्वयं और अन्य हेतु हानिकर हो जाते हैं। इस उपक्रम में एक सामान्य व्यक्ति प्रतिदान की प्रत्याशा में दूसरों के अहम् की पुष्टि में लग जाता है।  कुछ यह प्रयास चतुराई से करते हैं और कुछ बिना आवरण। 

पारस्परिक संबंधों में और सार्वजनिक स्थलों पर  इस प्रवृत्ति के समस्यामूलक होने के अलावा इन सर्वजनीन उपक्रमों के परिणामस्वरूप समाज का समस्त अभिकरण  परस्पर अहम् तुष्टि और पुष्टि का व्यूह बन जाता है। 

यह स्थिति सर्वहित, देशिक उन्नति, और जीवन की सहजता को बाधित करती  है। 

यह समस्या ज्ञानमीमांसा और अध्यापनशास्त्र द्वारा आरोपित बोधविरूपण की है जो एक व्यक्ति को उसकी स्वाभाविक अनन्यता को उसके बोध से निष्काषित कर उसे अपूर्ण और हीन सिद्ध करता है और उसे अंतहीन और अलभ्य अनन्यता के अभियानोंं में से किसी एक  में भर्ती कर लेता है। वह आरोपित अनन्यता उसे मात्र एक अन्य और अन्य का एक साधन बना देता है जो वह जीवनपर्यंत समझ नहीं पाता है। जनतंत्र के युग में यह तंत्र पारस्परिक सहभागिता से निर्मित होता है । 

नीरज कुमार झा 

Pedagogy

 Pedagogy is the most consequential social phenomenon. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Existential Ideology

A political community necessarily has an ideology, an interdependent and integrated set of ideas, though it may be relatively static or dynamic. It differs from political philosophy and theology, the latter often intermingling with the former, in the sense that it is an official and largely agreed-upon system of ideas.  Here, I have put ideology in a different context. Here, it is not exactly a deliberately created identifiable set of ideas for setting up a 'redemptive' order and running the same. The ideology which I am talking about here is of a generic type and is an unavoidable part of life.  

An ideology does speak to a community and its ecology, but it may not be objective, rational or sufficiently compatible with the same. More often, it is ideology, which defines and even shapes a phenomenon as per its own tenets than the intrinsic nature of it doing so. 

However, I underscore that ideas of objectivity, rationality, compatibility, and intrinsic nature of a phenomenon, terms I have used above, are quite fluid. 

Nonetheless, there are parameters which very objectively map levels of dehumanization or fulfilment, and individual sense organs do respond to physical pains and pleasures. There are widespread trends of people escaping to other places often risking their lives and uncertainties of an alien land. Basically, the reason for a people's discomfort and turmoil is invariably rooted in the ideology which governs them. 

Ideology as defined above is a fundamental constituent of life. It makes a nation happy and prosperous or otherwise may put it in serious trouble. 

How to avoid the pitfalls of an ideology or a faulty ideology altogether.  The remedy lies in the freedom of expression and in global connectivity. Certain ideologies, therefore, steadfastly curb any freedom and connectivity.

Fulfilment has never been an easy choice. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On Happiness

Laity seeks happiness in possessions; sages say it is renunciation. The thing is that happiness is a state of mind that occurs by making anything its cause on its own. Happiness is not an effort. You may be happy without a reason and sad for no reason. It also happens that you are apparently happy but not happy at a deeper level. In the same way, you feel sad but inside you, you can see your beaming face. The takeaway: you do, if you can do, what you think is worthwhile and the rest is the job of the walnut kernel put inside your cranium.

The fact is that the brain you have is not exactly what you can govern, it is your brain which mostly governs you.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Royalty Effect

Royalty is now only a tradition which goes on with accompanying performances of religious rituals in Britain. It suits Britain but the rites, pomp and pageantry on display and that being viewed across the world affect the countries which are struggling to get out of the stranglehold of medievalist regimes. It legitimates such regimes and these replicate many of its practices in their own ways to the legitimation of their rule. The effect is that rational policies of helping people lead a comfortable and dignified life are discounted and instead, a sense of false vanity is provoked. The ruling people have their glory, perks and privileges, and the commoners continue to suffer. Not wrong on the part of Britain, but the rest need to be utilitarian with their intellect.

NIraj Kumar Jha